A personal struggle to help create a world dominated by conscience rather than greed.

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Options For A Reluctant Planet-killer

After
losing my job at the end of last year, I focused on my writing and
research about global population and consumption, in large part out
of hope that I could discern a future that didn't involve the rapid extinction of all species including ours. As my blog posts over that
period attest, the results have been mixed.

I
found that if we try to continue increasing our life expectancy
following historical trends, we will quickly eliminate the resource
base that keeps us alive. If we try to increase our population with
a standard of living like what we have now, or better, we will soon
suffer extreme casualties and then enter a prolonged period of
painful instability. Hanging over our heads in any case is
catastrophic global warming that appears to be practically inevitable
as self-sustaining feedback mechanisms continue to kick in as the
result of pollution we already put into the atmosphere and oceans.

Thinking
long and hard about potential solutions, I came up with the following
set of actions that, if taken immediately, could deal with the
multiple threats I saw:

Reduce
consumption of ecological resources (our ecological footprint) by
half and safely shut down the technologies that depend on what we will
no longer use

Safely
remove all pollution, including waste from disabled technologies,
from the natural environment (e.g., air, water, and soil) and
neutralize its hazardous effects

Develop
and maintain a capability to deflect potentially hazardous asteroids
and comets, preferably from bases in space that do not depend on
Earth for resources and which can be used for settling other planets

Basically,
like children whose living space is overcome with the trash they've
created, we need to stop and clean up our mess. Those who resist ­-
or actively impede this effort ­-
need to be taught not to, or disciplined, or isolated by any adults
who might still remain in our spoiled world.

I
was recently forced by conditions to return to work for other people,
despite my hope that I could turn my creative efforts into a paying
job. I still hold on to that hope, and am trying to make it a
reality, albeit at a much slower pace. My job search has been
painful, as I knew it would be when I realized that the focus of our
civilization, the very core orientation of our economy, is toward
using everything that's left to make artificial environments for more
of us that will meet most of our needs and wants, with disastrous
consequences for most of us. I continue to struggle with the
inherent conflict between personal responsibility as defined by that
civilization which sustains me and the people who depend on me, and
global responsibility, which demands that I give back much of what I
– until now – have unwittingly taken to meet that personal
responsibility.

As
much as possible, I've limited my most active job search to
"environmental" organizations, which tend to be either
profit-making ventures that try to mitigate the effects of our
lifestyles by regulation-inspired cleanup and substitution of more
efficient products into our economic pipeline, or low to non-profit
advocacy groups that try to educate people about the problems facing
us and what they can do to help solve them (including manipulation
of political systems to enact stronger regulations and reduce waste
and corruption that gets in the way of solutions). I see their net
effect as neutral, at best, in dealing with our crisis, mainly
because they nibble away at the symptoms and some of the effects of
the problem – our fundamental motivation – and depend on the
tools and assumptions of the socio-economic system that serves that
motivation and enforces the "personal responsibility" of
the people embedded in it (to help others meet their needs and wants
within that system).

Neutral
impact is of course preferable to active destruction, which is what I
see resulting from most of the other options. Those options have a
spectrum, with fossil fuel and other extractive industries at the
damaging end, and local organic farmers at the healthy end. The debt
which forces me (through personal responsibility) to use my most
marketable skills, which are resource-intensive, is held by a
financial industry that largely enables the worst damage due to a
fundamental flaw in our economy that encourages people to use more
than they would naturally need or want by taking it from others. If
I were willing to totally abandon my new-found sense of global
responsibility (and my self respect), I would focus entirely on
selling my skills to the highest bidders, who are likely on the
damaging end of the spectrum. Instead, I tend to gravitate toward
the middle of the spectrum while also considering how to get toward
the healthier end.

In
my ongoing battle between hope and despair, I've at least learned
some more details about the alternative futures that those feeling
represent, and how those futures could unfold. Having indulged the
despair and nearly been crushed by it, I've chosen to understand and
promote the hope, even if the conditions it hinges on are highly
improbable. I am a reluctant planet-killer, trying imperfectly,
though trying nonetheless, to eventually have nothing to do with
killing anything or anyone, as an accomplice and certainly not
otherwise. I will continue to share what I learn in order to help
others do the same, even as I take detours along the way.

1 comment:

Note that his post figures prominently in my book "Death Stoppers Anthology," which includes the original "Death Stoppers" poem and the backstory in a special memoir section. You can get the book at many online bookstores and find more information at http://bradswriting.com/Deathstoppers.

About Me

Bradley Jarvis is a writer with a broad background who enjoys searching for the truth behind beliefs, and cares deeply about the future. He has written several books and created music soundtracks for two of them.